Mirror, Mirror
by Glacies
Summary: Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all? It's not Noir or Gauche, because they both have an irrational fear of mirrors.


Summary: Six reflections of Noir and Gauche and their abstract relationship.

**Disclaimer: I do NOT own Tegami Bachi or anything associated with it, and am making this only for my own entertainment. I am not getting any personal profit from this.**

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><p><em>The laws of physics states that light bounces off of a reflective surface and produces an image. If the image is upside down then it's considered a real image, something that exists and is true. If the image is the right way up then it's virtual - a fake. The image will also copy what you do. But what happens when your reflection is right-side up and exists, doesn't look like you, and is capable of acting on it's own, and is completely real?<em>

**i**

One by one, the mirrors in the room had been thrown to the floor, the glass shattering and scattering across the floor. Even then, the mirrors weren't the only thing smashed.

Colored glass and shards of mirrors mixed together in a deadly rainbow on the floor, sharp and ready to injure anyone who walked on it. A white haired teen sat a distance away from the mess on top of a bed, his arms wrapped around his legs and his head bowed.

_What if the image doesn't even act like you?_

There was only one mirror left in the room and it was large and imposing, bolted onto the wall and nearly a meter long. All of the Akatsuki dorms were covered in mirrors for some reason. Maybe it was designed so the workers could watch themselves grow proud and strong as they worked for their country, helping those who couldn't help themselves. Maybe it was designed so that the Bees would always look in tip-top shape, immaculate and impassive. But maybe it was so the workers there could see what a sight they had become, wasting away as they worked to hard without rest, driving themselves to the brink of death. The last one was true for some people, he mused. He'd seen it happen before.

_What happens if your reflection is right-side up and real?_

Looking up, he caught sight of the mirror, his eyes following the figure who wasn't perched on the bed but was instead pacing back and forth, back and forth, a black cloak covering their upper torso. He hated mirrors for a reason. He hated this place for a reason. It was making him see things that didn't exist.

There was a knock on the door of his dorm room, and he ignored it, opting instead to watch the pacing figure as he walked back and forth. His purple eyes were narrowed, and with a jolt, the seventeen year old realized that they both had the exact same colored eyes. The knocking became more urgent, then stopped.

A second later, the door opened and two people walked in. One was taller, with blond hair and brown eyes and wearing a plain uniform, no fittings or anything to suggest rank. The second was smaller and younger, with green eyes and brown hair, clinging onto their sibling's jacket. He knew them faintly. The first was a linguist that translated letters and documents for the hive, and the younger one was her sister, just as talented in certain languages. How many documents had he brought to them?

He couldn't remember.

The girl let go of her brother and picked her way carefully through the glass before looking up at him. "You look sad," She said, sitting down beside him and kicking her feet. "What's wrong?"

Her brother snorted. "Eileen, leave him alone." Walking around the mess on the floor, he produced a package. "You have a new delivery. I've already translated it."

He nodded numbly as her brother swept out of the room. A second later, the girl followed him. Before leaving, she smiled. "You look like a black cat with a frown. Except you don't have black hair, but white hair, and you don't have whiskers." She said seriously, following her brother out of the room. She mumbled something that he didn't quite catch and she was gone.

He stared at the mirror again. The person inside it had stopped pacing, instead choosing to look outside of the mirror.

_What if it doesn't look like you?_

He sighed again before picking up the package and reading the label. After reafing it, he slipped it into the bag that was next to him and turned off the light in the room. Curling up on top of the bed and grabbing a blanket, he frowned. He'd leave in the morning.

Inside the mirror, the light was still on. Fitting. He, Gauche, was in the dark, and him - the reflection inside the mirror that was real - was in the light.

_They weren't the same people after all._

_But they were. So which was real, and which was fake?_

Before falling off to sleep, he mumbled something.

"Noir."

The figure in the mirror smiled.

**ii**

Gauche was merely that annoying voice in the back of his head. He and Gauche were two different people, why couldn't they realize that? He wasn't Gauche, and Gauche wasn't first time that he had run into the white haired boy who had called him Gauche, he was taken back. Who was Gauche?

Then the voice in the back of his head had frowned and said that he was.

Noir had been confused that there was a voice in the back of his head that was telling him these things top begin with, but this was the same voice that had told him how to shoot a shindan without really trying, so he wasn't that concerned.

But now, as he sat in the room he had taken residence in, he frowned. If he was Gauche - that was what the white-haired boy and the girl and everyone in this damn place was saying - then he wasn't Noir. But if he was Gauche -_ which was the name of the voice in the back of his head_ - then Noir never existed, which meant he had never truly existed because there wasn't enough room for Gauche _and_ Noir and he certainly wasn't Gauche.

Gauche was just there in the back of his head, occasionally saying things that he deemed relevant, like _You shouldn't go touch that fence, it hurts because it's got barbed wire AND there's attack dogs behind it_ and _That's going to get you killed _or the occasional _Dammit Noir, stop doing stupid things and watch where you're going!_

He wasn't Gauche because he didn't know who Gauche knew and he didn't know Gauche's friends or family. He knew ABOUT Gauche in bits and pieces, unimportant things that a friend would know about another friend - _gauche's favorite food was apples, specifically green apples and he enjoyed sleeping under trees and picking out constellations of the stars -_ little things that he was figuring out every day when he noticed something and Gauche would mutter something but he wasn't Gauche because Gauche was a dead person who had somehow ended up in the back of his head. His Gauche was merely a subconscious reminder of the person who used to be Gauche but now was just there, with some memories and personality intact.

Because there wasn't room for both of them, because one of them would have to be fake.

_Maybe Noir is the dominant half of Gauche's subconscious and the subconscious that we knew Gauche as had taken over for him for the first seventeen years on his life. Or maybe Gauche was taken by the sun and we got Noir. If it's the second case, then I don't know. It could be either," _The yellow-eyed man with an eye patch (_Dr. Roy Thunderland Jr., Gauche whispered.)_ had suggested when they were alone.

Gauche didn't know.

Noir didn't know.

Neither wanted to know, because that meant they would know which one was real and which one was the right-side up reflection of an image.

Later that day, Noir ended up smashing the one mirror he could find in the Letter Bee Hive.

**iii**

"How old is he?" Noir asked, glancing into the crib again. His father smiled (not his father, but Gauche's father really), standing by who he thought was his son (It was really Noir, but who needed to know?). He looked proud as he picked the baby up and held him in his arms.

"Three days." Gauche's father responded, shifting the baby slightly. Gauche's father's eyes were soft, the purple color that Noir and Gauche had both gotten reflected in them. For a half second, Noir wondered what the baby would look like when he was grown, then settled on a mix between their father and mother - off-white hair (Not pure white like the father, but warmer like the mother) and purple eyes.

"His name?"

"He doesn't have one." His half-brother (in a way, since he and Gauche were - the easiest way to describe them were like brothers, but they weren't-) looked up at him, and his father (Gauche's father-) placed the baby in Noir's arms. "Any suggestions?"

For a half second he was going to suggest something sensible like Arthur or Edward, but then he paused. Those names didn't have much power behind them. "How about... er..." He stalled for a second. What was a good name...?

For a second, he contemplated telling the man the name Gauche, but the voice in the back of his mind shot down that idea.

_No. It will make it confusing if I'm Gauche and they thought you were Gauche and there's a half-brother named Gauche. Choose something simple, like Jesse._

_"_Jesse." Noir said, looking at the child in his arms. His half-brother, sired by a man he never knew and a woman who never knew he existed. He placed the baby back in his father's arms. Looking to the side, he noticed the large mirror on the wall. He paused for a second, his eyes moving over the images on it - a father and a son. A son with a uniform on who was holding a child with silver-gray hair and blue eyes. He dimly recognizes it after a second because Gauche pipes up in the back of his mind and the child looks familiar and the boy in the picture looks just like him with no scar on his face and he seems _happy_.

Noir feels the air get stuck in his throat and he's in shock for a second because he recognizes them all. A father, a son, a sister.

It's his first real glimpse of Gauche with other people. Every time he sees mirrors - he doesn't see himself in mirrors, but he sees _into_ mirrors, _there's a difference_ - he sees Gauche by himself. But with other people...

He shakes his head slightly and nods at his (Gauche's) father. "I should go now. It was nice seeing you."

He's out of the room in an instant, wandering through the hallways and grateful that they don't have mirrors.

He's almost out of the house when he hears Jesse's mother.

"You're always welcome here, I hope you know that." The woman informed him, stepping out of the kitchen and fixing him with a stare. Her eyes were purple, the color of Gauche's eyes and his and Jesse's and Gauche's father's (but not Sylvette because she had taken after her mother and even Gauche didn't even know who her father was. He had a sinking feeling it wasn't his, but she was his sister anyway.) "If anything ever gets too hard for you, just come here for a while. We've got plenty of room for another person."

"I might have to take you up on that offer." He told her, feeling like he's faking it but he's not because he can't fake something like this from someone who's so blunt and honest.

**iv**

It's four years later before Noir returns to Central Yuusari and it isn't anything that could be described as a happy visit. He doesn't want to come here, but there's no other place that can help him.

Roda is right behind him as he comes into the city, ducking through the alleyways and the side streets, rushing past people with a destination in mind. He's grateful that his partner decided to come with him even though she didn't have to, but he simply doesn't have the breath to thank her. She's not his dingo now, and she's not his assistant, but she's his partner and in the past four years they've become closer than friends and they've possibly become something else.

He's not sure how to describe their relationship other than that they just _are_.

He's never been the best with words and he knows that and accepts it.

As they make their way deeper into the heart of the city, he is mentally scolding himself for not moving faster. There are lives in the balance here and he should be moving faster. Roda is right behind him, keeping pace.

She neither moves ahead or drops behind, but is a constant reminder of what is, what was, and what will be.

He hurries a bit faster before he feels his lungs start to seize up and his leg give out, sending him falling.

It feels like he's falling for a long, long time.

Rods reaches out, but she can't catch him because he's falling an impossibly long distance. It's almost like he's falling through something.

(Like an_ image_ and a _mirror_.)

**v**

It's a simple room, really. The walls are about nine feet high and are painted white. The ceiling follows suit and it is the color of nothing and everything. The furniture is even simpler. A small desk - painted white of course - a white bookshelf with no books, and a white wooden bed with a white comforter on it.

A white haired teen sat on top of a bed, his arms wrapped around his legs and his head bowed. His clothing contrasted with the room, consisting of black and gray. His eyes are staring at something.

He is looking at the floor.

The floor is a mirror.

There is a single thought running through his head. This cannot be happening. He doesn't like mirrors because they show him that he's merely an upside down image of a right side up reflection.

(_Right side up is fake and upside down is true. That's what the laws about images say._)

So is he true? He's upside down from the person in the mirror. But the person in the mirror is the right side up version of somebody else.

He wants to scream.

This has to be fake. It had to be, there was no other explanation-

A screech of terror lances through the whiteness.

It's not stopping.

Because in the beginning, there was Nothing. Out of the Nothing became Something, and from Something became the _Truth_.

**vi**

They hesitate for a half second before embracing him. Noir stiffens instinctively before realizing that he's not Noir anymore, but he's supposed to be Gauche. He's still wrapping his mind around that everything (_Jesse, Gauche, mirrors, upside down and right side up reflections,_) has been merely a fever induced dream that he has been trapped in for a shirt period of time.

A part of him wants to say it can't be a dream because it seemed so simply real and it was now a part of him, but hen he realizes that he can't hear Gauche in the back of his mind because Gauche never existed and the entire time Gauche was a rambling of madness in his mind.

But he's confused as well, because he's now Gauche, and he has no clue what to act like, or who any of these people are really. He distantly recognizes some from his madness _(Dr. Roy Thunderland Jr, Lag Seeing... That's about it, really,)_ but he has no clue how to act around all hear people. He knows their names but he doesn't know them.

After a while, they had finished talking and had left him here for a short period of time to gather his thoughts and figure out exactly what he's going to do. He's going to become Gauche for a short period of time. It's like a job, he muses. Just impersonate Gauche. Maybe find out what a family was like. Becoming an actor when know one truly knows your acting. He's used to it after all, he realizes. It's who he is. Looking up, he smiles crookedly.

Across from him is a mirror tacked to a wall.

For the first time, Noir sees his image and feels completely and utterly _free_.

_fin._

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><p><strong>an: this monster is just...**

**Gah.**

**I dislike my writing style. Constructive advice, anyone?**

**The central idea of this piece was the whole image quote at the very top. Then I had this thought of 'well, obiviously Noir's craaaaaazy, so lets screw up his head.' It only ended up screwing mine up.**


End file.
